Our Visit to Krka National Park, Croatia: Not What We Expected

Krka is one of Croatia’s most famous and recognised nature reserves, an expanse of wilderness that incudes vast forests, lakes, rivers and breathtaking waterfalls. We love the outdoors, so this was absolutely one of the locations we were most looking forward to exploring.

Our experience in Krka was, let’s just say, a little strange.

Here’s everything that happened during our day-trip, including some useful information on how to reach the national park, the best way to book your tickets and whether or not we recommend visiting this renowned location.

Let’s get started!

Where to buy your tickets

The entrance to Krka National Park is payed, and you’ll have to buy a ticket either online or at one of the entrances.

Prices can vary depending on the time of the year, starting at €7 in December to the end of March, €20 in April, May and October and €40 from June to the end of September.

You can check the official pricing table of 2025 here.

It’s important to know that the majority of the park is closed off from the beginning of November to the end of March. All boat excursions and ferries, the bus to Lozovac, the Skradinski buk waterfalls and visits to Visovac and Oziđana pećina cave will not be available, so plan accordingly if you’re thinking of visiting Krka during that period!

View of the Skradinski buk waterfalls from the trail.

How do you get to Krka National Park?

Located in central Dalmatia, Krka National Park is easily reachable from several Croatian cities.

We opted to travel and stay a few days in Šibenik, the closest city to Krka, but you can also easily rent a car from either Zadar or Split and drive just under an hour to the park.

If you choose to go from Šibenik, you’ll have to catch a bus from the city station to either Skradin or Lozovac, where two of the park’s entrances are located. Just don’t trust the digital timetables at the station, since they don’t update properly and it almost made us miss our bus.

It’s also important to know that bus schedules are not available online, and busses are not very frequent during the low season.

Taking a guiding tour to the park is also a very popular option, as it includes a transfer to and from the park, and some extra perks like swimming or wine tasting. These tours generally start from Split, and are a worry-free way of visiting the park!

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Reaching the park from Skradin

If you choose to enter from Skradin like we did, you have two options: You can hike 2.7 miles (4.5 km) to the park’s entrance, or take a ferry.

Going by boat is included with the entrance fee, and you simply have to choose that option when booking your ticket and select your preferred time slot.

While we were looking forward to taking the ferry and sharing our experience, we were unfortunately denied boarding because it was overbooked.

We were pretty bummed out and, not wanting to wait around an hour for the next boat, we decided to walk to the park’s entrance. The hike was actually a lot of fun, fairly flat and not at all challenging, with some absolutely amazing views of jagged cliffs, forests and the river below.

With that said, there are no indications whatsoever, so just follow the road along the river heading east until you reach a wooden walkway. From there, you continue straight until you reach the main entrance.

Reaching the park from Lozovac

If you’re not interested in taking the ferry, Lozovac is the definitely the easiest town from which to reach Krka’s southern entrances. On the edge of town, just after a large parking space, you’ll find a small trail that leads directly into the park.

A short walk around the Skradinski buk waterfalls

After walking for about an hour, we passed the dock where the ferry would have dropped us off and finally reached Krka’s entrance.

We were surprised, however, at how nobody seemed interested in checking whether or not we had tickets. There were a few park staff members lounging on the side of the path, but they were mainly busy chatting or looking at their phones, and didn’t really pay any attention to the visitors passing by. We honestly found it rather strange, especially considering the cost of a ticket, but hey, what they do or don’t is up to them.

Regardless, we continued forward to the Skradinski buk waterfall, one of Krka’s most spectacular sights. From there, a paved path continues around a beautiful lake and up along the waterfalls, offering some absolutely breath-taking views of the waterfalls crashing below.

The road continues along some old water mills, where you can read some interesting information on their historical importance and how they were used in times past.

Wooden walkways inside Krka National Park.

After the water mills, the path turns to wooden walkways that pass over the edge of the waterfalls. During the busier months this part of the trail can become quite busy, and we’ve heard it’s common for movement to come to a bit of a standstill. The walkways continue to the other side of the waterfall, where a path descends back down the lake.

As we continued along the walkaway, we came to a point that was closed for maintenance, and where the path continued along a gravel road. Curious to see if we could take the road to a different area of the park, we started walking in the opposite direction and were immediately stopped by two people talking in Croatian. They didn’t speak English, but we figured out that we were not allowed that way, so we proceed along the marked path and back towards the lake.

Part of the path that was closed for maintenance during our visit.

And that’s pretty much it.

While absolutely gorgeous, we covered the whole trail in about two hours, walking at a chill pace and stopping half-an-hour to eat a sandwich. We couldn’t even take the boat to explore Visovac and Roški slap in the north of the park because for some reason it wasn’t running that day. So there we were, out of trails to walk and with around five hours to wait before the next bus back to Šibenik.

The long wait

Having seen pretty much all that part of the park could offer, we decided to make our way back to Skradin.

Since the ferry needs to be reserved in advance and we had only booked it for the morning, we walked the 2.7 miles back to town for the second time that day.

We arrived in Skradin with plenty of time to kill, so we explored the town a little; there’s not much to see, apart from a small tower from where you can enjoy a great of view of the surrounding area.

In the end, we went to a supermarket, bought some snacks and drinks and chilled by the water’s edge until our bus arrived and took us back to Šibenik.

A strange experience

While, overall, we enjoyed our time in Krka National Park, it was definitely not what we had expected.

While we were okay with spending €20 each (in our eyes, any money that goes to preserving natural environments is well spent) to enter the park, the fact that the hike only took two hours was admittedly a little difficult to swallow.

Our concept of a national park is also much different from how they are organised in Croatia:

In both our countries, Italy and Portugal, there is no charge to enter national parks (barring some fees for vehicles) and they can be freely explored, so a nature reserve where the trail is very linear and leaves little to no room to wander outside of the predetermined path is a bit of foreign concept.

Ultimately, Krka can be crowded, very pricy, and somewhat complicated to reach if you’re not travelling by car or with a tour. With that said, if you accept that it is not a typical national park and more of semi-guided visit, then you’ll have a great time, for all of two hours that is.

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